Ralph's Party

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘I also know that you’ve heard all this before. I know about Nick, and Jason, and the other ones. I know you’ve had enough declarations of love to last you a lifetime …’

  ‘What!’ Jem’s eyes were saucers.

  ‘ … but I promise you, I’m not like that. I wouldn’t want to change you, to control you. I want you exactly as you are now. So, if I don’t hassle you and I don’t bombard you with flowers and poems and love letters, it’s not because I don’t love you, it’s because I do. D’you see?’

  ‘What!? Rewind! How the hell do you know about Nick and … and Jason, and everyone?’

  Ralph looked across at Jem’s furious face and exhaled heavily. Oh what the hell, he thought. Nothing to lose now. May as well go for broke. He took a deep breath.

  ‘Oh, God. Jem. Please don’t overreact to this, please try to understand. This is going to sound dreadful, but … but … I read your diaries. I’m so sorry. I’ve been reading your diaries since the day you moved in. I mean, not just reading your diaries, it was more than that. I’ve spent hours sitting in your room, just breathing you in, just being among your things. I know everything about you. I know how ugly you felt when you were growing up, I know about all those lovesick boys, all those clingy, demanding men who tried to change you, tried to control you. I know everything about you and I think it’s only fair that you know everything about me. I know it was wrong – I’ve never done it before, I promise you. I was just sort of … drawn to them … drawn to you. I know that sounds like bullshit, but it’s true. And it made me feel so close to you. I wanted so much to feel close to you. I’m not good with intimacy, Jem. It was the only way I knew. I’m very, very, very sorry. Really I am. I’m so sorry, Jem.’ He smiled nervously, his gorgeous, lop-sided, lazy smile, from left to right. ‘Please, Jem – say something.’ He held his breath and awaited her response.

  Jem’s face was puce. ‘I can’t believe it! I can’t believe you read my diaries! That’s … horrible! Christ, Ralph. I thought you were my friend! Well, look. You can forget about that, you can forget all about that. Friends don’t destroy their friend’s sense of privacy, friends don’t snoop around their friend’s personal things. It makes me feel sick just thinking about it …’

  ‘Please … Jem … please try to understand …’

  ‘No, Ralph. I don’t understand. And from this day on, from this moment on, you and I are flatmates – nothing more, nothing less – no more curries, no more chat, no more anything. Just keep away from me and everything will be just fine. Let’s just forget any of this ever happened-OK?!’

  ‘No! Jem! Please! I don’t want to forget this ever happened. I’m glad this happened. I wanted this to happen. Please – let’s talk about this.’

  ‘Ralph, didn’t you hear what I said? No more. It’s over. I want to go home. Let’s get the bill.’

  She leant down to pick up her handbag then, rustling around in it for her purse, her chest rising and falling violently with the effort of not crying. Her world was spinning around her head like a broken helicopter. She had never felt so confused in her entire life. She was angry, so angry, about Ralph reading her diary, snooping in her room. But she was feeling more than that. She could live with the idea of Ralph reading her diaries. She wasn’t a secretive person, she had nothing to hide. It was a terrible thing for him to have done, but she could handle it. What she couldn’t handle was the avalanche of feelings triggered by Ralph’s declaration of love, his declaration of what, if she was honest with herself, she’d known all along. Ralph was in love with her! He’d laid his hand on the table, he’d let the cat out of the bag, and there were beans all over the bloody place. This was no longer a game. The situation was no longer under control. And she wished she could have laughed lightly, patted Ralph’s hands and told him sweetly that she loved him too, but not in that way, that her heart and her destiny belonged to Smith, that she wanted nothing more from him than friendship. But she couldn’t. Because it wasn’t true.

  Damn and blast and fuck it. She loved him. She loved Ralph. She loved the way he held his pint and his fag in the same hand. She loved that he watched The Waltons in bed every Sunday morning. She loved the way he always stopped to pet dogs he passed on the street. She loved the way he shouted at people on the telly he disagreed with. She loved his hands and his long bony feet. She loved his lazy smile and the way he started wheezing when he was hysterical with laughter. She loved the fact that she could say absolutely anything to him and he’d make a conversation out of it, no matter how silly or banal. She loved his fascination with the detail of life, how he always noticed a good sunset or an unusual cloud formation, a hidden gargoyle on the side of a building or a ladder in someone’s tights. She loved the gap at the back of his mouth where he’d lost a tooth in a football match and she loved the little scar that ran into his hairline where he’d head-butted an amp by mistake at a Clash gig in 1979.

  She loved him and now he loved her. They could be together, they could just hold hands, disappear into the sunset together and live happily ever after. They could love each other.

  She looked up at him quickly. He was facing away from her, forlornly trying to attract the attention of a waiter She looked at the sweet V-shape of hair at the nape of his neck that she’d always wanted to touch, the defeated slump of his shoulders. He was adorable. Even as the adrenaline of anger flooded her body, even as she put a dam over her feelings towards him, she yearned to turn around and take him in her arms and kiss the living daylights out of him. She loved him. She wanted him. She’d never even kissed him …

  But she couldn’t love him. She just couldn’t. What about Smith? The floodgates snapped closed.

  Ralph turned around and met her gaze.

  ‘Jem …’ he beseeched.

  ‘No!’ she snapped.

  ‘Please …’

  ‘No!’

  They left the restaurant in a heavy cloud of silence, hailed a cab and went home, the atmosphere between them setting like cement as they drove.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Karl drove straight round to Tom and Debbie’s that night, after Siobhan had kicked him out, and phoned her, repeatedly, every ten minutes, listening with disbelief to the sound of his own voice on the answerphone, informing him that he wasn’t there, but that he could leave a message. Of course he wasn’t fucking there!

  The following day he tried her at her mother’s, every half-hour, until Mrs McNamara had finally snapped and told him she’d call the police if he tried again; Siobhan did not want to talk to him. He couldn’t really remember much about it all now, it was a big, black, drunken blur. He’d got himself to work somehow on Monday afternoon.

  And that was when it happened – when everything changed.

  He hadn’t planned it at all. The last thing he’d been thinking about in the previous seventy-two or so hours was work, his show. But he was a DJ. He couldn’t phone in sick. So he’d driven in, in a daze, his automatic pilot changing gears for him and looking out for traffic lights.

  ‘You all right, mate?’ his producer John had asked, as he stumbled blindly into the studio.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Everything was different. His studio felt different. John seemed like a stranger. They went through the playlist. Funny, he thought, he was the DJ, he was the man who played the records, the man who played the songs with the lyrics that cut right through the heartstrings of the broken-hearted throughout London. How many times, he wondered, had he put on The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Any More’, and how many times had some poor, devastated, lonely fucker in an empty flat switched on his radio and heard it and felt the pain of loss even more greatly than before. He’d done that to people, without even realizing it. And now it was his turn. But he could control it, he could change the playlist. He could play the Spice Girls and ‘I Will Survive’ and ‘Aga-fucking-doo’ and keep it all at bay, all the pain. He could play God.

  But he didn’t want to. He would stick with the playlist and deal with the consequences. Wh
o wanted to be God anyway?

  He’d glanced through the list, viewing it for land-mines, but he knew the emotions wouldn’t hit him until he was listening to the song, till the lyrics were real in his ears.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ asked John, again.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  Why wasn’t he feeling anything? He wasn’t feeling anything. Just numbness and weirdness and emptiness. He didn’t want to cry. He didn’t want to run. He didn’t want to be here. Things were just happening to him, words were coming from his mouth, his hands were moving, holding his cup of coffee, his legs crossed and uncrossed themselves, his eyes read and translated words for him, but he had nothing to do with any of it, it was all just happening. He wondered if his face might actually smile, if his throat might just laugh out loud. Probably.

  ‘Mr Pitiful’, Otis Redding: that was first up. He remembered that song. It was on a tape he’d made for Siobhan when they’d only just met. You know, how you used to, when you were too young to know who you really were so you’d make tapes for each other, a way of saying, This is me, this is who I am, this is what I like, and because I like you so much, I want you to like it, too,’ before you had a job or a car or a flat or a history or a proper personality that could say all that for you. So he’d made her endless tapes, spent hours painstakingly picking through his record collection for just the right track, hours recording them on to C90 tapes he bulk-bought from Woolies. And then he’d handed them to her proudly, wanting her so much to love them, to love his music as much as he loved it. And she had. And that had made him love her even more than he already did …

  The news was read, the weather forecast and the traffic reported. Karl’s mind went blank. What was he supposed to say? What did he usually say? He had no recollection. He couldn’t even remember what day it was, what month. The clock ticked down the seconds. Five … four … three … two … one. Karl’s mouth was bone dry. His voice had vanished. His whole spiritual being had disappeared from sight. Karl had ceased to exist … His jingle ran, and then there was a minuscule moment of silence, magnified ten-thousand-fold by the number of people who heard it. John stared at him, bulgy-eyed, the studio assistant reached for the mike, ready to step in, and then, finally Karl opened his mouth.

  ‘Good evening, London, you’re tuned in to ALR, London’s finest, and I’m Karl Kasparov. It’s 3.30 p.m. and it’s Drivetime here in the country’s capital. Just three shopping days left till Christmas, so I’ve been told, and here’s one of my favourite songs, for all you useless guys, just like me, who haven’t bought a single gift. It’s called … “Mr Pitiful”.’

  He slipped the cans from his ears and stared in wonderment around him. He hadn’t given a single thought to what he was going to say when he went on the air, and then he’d managed that – it was second nature. John gave him the thumbs up, relieved. Karl was a pro. It was going to be all right.

  And it was all right. For the next fifteen minutes or so, at least, he was quite amazingly good. He breezed through the link-ups; sailed through REM and the Manic Street Preachers; ‘Oliver’s Army’ was a piece of piss; ‘Respect’ by Aretha, no problem; ‘Wonderwall’ didn’t even come close to cracking his professional veneer. He had some on-air banter with John, drank his coffee, smiled and even laughed a little. He was just doing his show. He began to feel almost normal again.

  And then … he wasn’t expecting it, it wasn’t one of his favourite songs, it didn’t really remind him of Siobhan, or even of his youth: ‘The Bitterest Pill’, the Jam.

  Something about the song tore right through his emotions. He loved the Jam. Siobhan had loved the Jam, too. And it was so true – this was the bitterest pill he’d ever had to swallow, the end of everything, the beginning of nothing. And it was all his fault. His mind filled involuntarily with images of Siobhan, smiling, laughing. His senses filled up with the smell of her and the sound of her.

  And then he started crying. Slowly at first, tears just trickling down the side of his nose. He turned away from John and the rest of the team, wiped them away, took deep breaths. There were forty-five seconds left of the song. His breath came faster and faster, the tears thicker and thicker; thirteen seconds to go.

  His body started to heave, and he suddenly realized that there was no way he was going to be able to stop the flow. John was talking to someone on the phone, the assistant had gone to the toilet, no one had noticed. Three seconds … two … one. He should have lined up another song, segued straight into something else, given himself a chance to recover. But he didn’t, it hadn’t occurred to him. The airwaves were silent, except for the sound of his laboured breathing as he tried to regain control of himself. It was like an awkward silence at a dinner party except a thousand times worse. John put down the phone and stared at him in horror. The silence continued. Karl kept crying.

  And then, at last, he spoke. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew that eventually John would have played a jingle, a trailer, something. This wasn’t what radio was about. Radio was about professionalism, seamlessness, technology, music. It wasn’t about his heartache or his misery. It wasn’t about him.

  ‘I … I’m sorry,’ he began, his voice quavering dangerously, his vowels thick and doughy with mucus, ‘I’m … I’m …’

  Everything in the studio stopped; John was rooted to the spot, his jaw hanging open, his hand glued to his cheek. There was no bustle, none of the usual activity, just an unhappy man talking quietly into a microphone like it was his best mate down the pub, while tears poured down his cheeks.

  ‘I’ve had a bad weekend … my girlfriend left me.’

  John winced and covered his face with his hands. ‘Oh, my God,’ he muttered, ‘he’s doing a Blackburn, he’s doing a fucking Tony Blackburn.’

  ‘Siobhan, my girlfriend. Fifteen years. And … it’s all over … and … oh, God, I’m sorry. I thought I’d be able to do this but … but, it’s so hard. God, it’s so hard. It’s only just hit me, y’know. She’s gone. Siobhan’s gone!’ He let loose a gigantic sob. ‘Oh, God! If you knew what Siobhan was like. She was … she was like an angel. Just like an angel. I wanted her so badly, I’ve never wanted anything in my life like I wanted Siobhan and then I got her – I don’t know how, I didn’t deserve her, y’know. She was too good for me, way too good for me – a different class. She was so beautiful. And, God, you should’ve seen her hair, it was like pure gold, y’know? She could’ve had anyone and she chose me. And I don’t know what I’d’ve done without her all these years, without her smile and her laugh and her goodness and her wisdom. God, she was wise. And her love. She loved me so much – d’you understand? D’you know what it’s like to be loved that much by someone so beautiful and so … so good. And I … I …’ His voice began to crack up again. ‘I never took it for granted. Really. I never did. I always thanked God for that woman, always appreciated her.

  ‘But … but, but … listen! Now just you listen to me, all you men out there. And women. This is important! This is just so bloody important, you must pay attention. If you’ve got a man, or a woman, and you love them and they love you, don’t mess around, don’t cheat on them. Please. Just don’t do it. I did it. I took the trust of the most incredible, beautiful woman in the world and I made a mockery of it. And for what? For nothing! For disposable sex with a disposable woman who meant less than nothing to me. Can you believe it! Can you believe anyone would do something that stupid?! It was a pathetic little ego-boost. I can see that now. I always thought Siobhan was too good for me, too beautiful, too special. I tried to pretend it didn’t bother me, but I always felt smaller than her, and then this other girl came along and made me feel like the Man, y’know? I was cleverer than her, nicer than her, better than her, or so I thought. And she wanted me. And my sad little male ego just took what was on offer, just grabbed it without a thought, for anything or anyone, not even myself probably. Oh, God! I didn’t even enjoy it that much, y’know! But at least I felt special – I was the special one. It made me appre
ciate Siobhan even more, when the affair ended. It made me realize things about love and relationships that I hadn’t thought about before. About continuity, about growing old with someone. How that can be as romantic as falling in love. I wanted to marry Siobhan, then, be with her for ever and ever and ever. But it was too late. She found out about the affair, she found out exactly what I was like. That I was pathetic and selfish and weak. And she deserved someone better than me. So she left. And now I’m alone. And it’s over. I’m going to go back to our flat tonight, where we used to live together, and she won’t be there. It’ll be empty. And … and … and I didn’t know it was possible to feel this unhappy and this sad and this bad. I loved her so much, and I broke her trust, and now I’m swallowing my bitter, bitter pill, and I deserve it. So – so just don’t do it, OK? Just don’t. Because if you’re with someone you love, who loves you back, then you’re the luckiest person in the world. Ignore that sexy bloke in the marketing department or that horny girl who lives upstairs, or whatever. Because it is not worth it. D’you hear? It … is … not … worth … it.’ Karl took a deep breath and sat up straight. The tears had stopped. ‘Well,’ he began, looking cautiously around him at the open-mouthed assistants and secretaries and producers who were now standing five-deep in the booth, gathered together from all corners of the ALR building, staring at him, some glossy-eyed, some embarrassed, some horrified. One young girl wiped a tear away from her eye and looked away from him. There was absolute silence. ‘I … erm … I’m sorry. I –er – sorry. Sorry.’ He laughed a tight little laugh and looked around again at his waxwork audience. Jeff stood at the front now, his arms crossed, eyeing Karl with a look that was impossible to define. ‘I’ve got a feeling this might be my last show on ALR – I’ll put another song on. And, I’m sorry …’